look, I’m smiling

Sometimes I open my Bible and it’s not an epiphany.

Sometimes it’s more like, Thanks for reminding me about how bears sometimes eat you if you tease a bald man, God, but couldn’t you have given me a word that was a little more, ah, relevant?

But I guess I don’t regularly tease bald men, so the lesson was not lost on me.

But still, pertinent words are so nice. Like a key that unlocks something deep in your heart you didn’t even know was there, let alone locked and beyond reach. Or like that feeling you get when you finally relax your shoulders and they drop about two inches with an accompanying tangible loss of tension; you feel better and then you wonder how long exactly you had been living your life with jacked up shoulders. You wonder why you didn’t think to relax a lot sooner, the difference is that much better.

So remember this season of hard times I’ve found myself right smack in the middle?

It’s the kind of season in which the story of bears eating people who tease men is just not gonna cut it.

And I’ve also recently felt a little better, sometimes bordering on a lot better, despite the fact that nothing has outwardly changed.

And I wonder why.

Not why nothing has changed so much–I actually stopped wondering about that a while ago–but why I’m feeling better now. And I’ve even wondered if it indicated that there is something wrong with me. Like how sometimes I can laugh when someone tells me semi-bad news, only way worse because there’s nothing semi about the bad news this time.

And so the other day I opened my Bible and I knew God knew that I was going through something a lot deeper than the debate as to whether or not I should tease a bald man (I shouldn’t). I knew he got it cause I read this:

But the gloominess shall not be upon she who is distressed.

Isaiah 9:1

And then I was like, Oh.

Oh, it’s okay if I don’t feel totally gloomy all the time.

Oh, it’s alright to start feeling through the darkness with my hands and begin to hope that the darkness will give way to coats. And not just any coats, but thick fur coats, and suddenly I will be stepping through snow drifts and then there will be talking animals and even a centaur and…

Oh, sorry. I got lost for a moment in Narnia. You know I always wanted to go there. I even got my parents to get me a wardrobe when I was younger, but the dull thing never worked. Where has all the magic gone, I ask?

But my point was that Oh, it’s okay to hope. To feel through the darkness until I find something good.

To feel a lot like I look in this picture, actually.

Oh, no--see, I like being at the end of my rope. Cause see? I'm smiling.

Cause, yes, I am still hanging at the end of my rope, but at least I am smiling now.

Not all the time, sure, but a lot more than I used to.